By Will McInnes

MeasurementCamp II - notes on the goodness

Another interesting and useful session with the MeasurementCampers (ahem) yesterday.

Each time (this was the second session) I really don't expect anyone to turn up: if you've organised a worky type event without tickets then you'll know the fear. Added to this, due to every other priority in life I'm pretty poor at getting the word out there: the odd tweet, maybe a lone blog post! And yet the quality of people joining the conversations is actually upsettingly good.

Relief to see just plain numbers, bodies on the ground, and then delight to see just who turned out!

We always kick things off with the well-worn and cheesey corporate tradition of introducing ourselves, what we do and why we came to MeasurementCamp. And as the spotlight moved around the room I was blown away by the breadth and intelligence of the contributors: we had reps from some of the best admired 'traditional' (sorry guys :) and Online PR firms in the country; we had reps from some of the leading measurement technology companies in the world; a couple of the smartest clients I've met yet in Dan Macquillan (Make Your Mark) and Helen Aspell (University of Southampton); a gaggle of social media planners and digital strategists;  one shiny podcaster; a smattering of SEO hats and an increasing number of people calling themselves social media agencies (what kinda silly person goes into that business?).

As usual we collaboratively suggested topics for work & discussion, and then hived off in little focused work groups to tackle those topics which motivated us most.

I think this time we had a group of Benchmarks and benchmarking, a group on What to Measure and another group of What to Measure, but with a different angle on it.

In the group I joined, benchmarking, we had aimed to find ways to help the industry benchmark successes in social media communications and marketing.

We quickly acknowledged that, with the help of the Diffusion of Innovation model, this being a new immature and evolving marketplace, those with the precious data on what worked, what didn't work and what some good yardsticks were would understandably be protecting such precious intellectual property, and that whereas in mature markets (say email marketing, or Direct Mail) information sharing was the norm, here, at the pioneering edges, such data was unlikely to be forthcoming.

What we moved onto instead was 'how to benchmark' to describe a simple flow that will allow clients and agencies to at least begin benchmarking themselves and developing their own IP in this area: a valuable asset for any organisation; and an important step towards the eventual goal of sharing such data.

The flow isn't exactly effing rocket science, but nonetheless I believe it'll help my team at least to have a point of reference and an explicit 'way to do this' on each project or campaign we work on.

And it shook out another interesting thread to the conversation: the range of tools available to do the 'snapshot' bit of the per-client-benchmarking exercise. So we then finished by getting down a long list of useful tools for measuring social media. There were some superb suggestions that I'd never heard of (Facebook Lexicon, searches Walls for key words - haven't yet checked it out, but sounds v.v.useful indeedy; a Yahoo Pipes tool developed specifically for this kinda malarkey) - brilliant. So all of this will be wikified. Which is the point of all of this: pooling knowledge; sharing resources; being useful, and so breaking important ground for all.

So what next for MeasurementCamp?

1. Momentum building
2. Wikifying everything
3. Building resilience around a core

1. Momentum building

This is about keeping things rolling.
About making our fancy big talk really *stick* by growing our wider base of contributors and fans of the project (we don't actually need more people at each session, but given that we all have different commitments and demanding work lives we need a certain critical mass to sustain us). And we want this work, this energy, and this collaborative approach to seed into the wider industry - in citations, in awards, whatever, buzz - I believe that's what it's called ;-) All because this will help achieve our goals - our goals of developing ever-better clarity around measuring social media so that we can improve the way organisations communicate with their stakeholders (which develops our businesses too) and accelerate the pace of this inevitable change.

2. Wikifying everything

This is about actually making a difference.
In small, face-to-face groups we create the sparks.
But by wikifying everything useful - processes, lists of resources, case studies - we create the roaring bonfire, the beacon that will help those we want to help. And we're getting better at this. There is a growing recognition that it's only *really* useful if it's comprehensible, meaningful and useful to those that have never sat at a small wooden table in The Coach & Horses, so our role is to contribute to the platform, our wonderful and blossoming wiki. So notes were taken, commitments were made - let's make it happen. (Indeed, hat tip to Helen from Dare, who made wonderful contributions on the day, and has already overhauled the wiki - thanks @helenium :) and also to Simon Quance from Hyperlaunch - thanks man - fuck me it's working!!! The wiki is ALIVE!!!! (Cue stormy music, seaweed on face, howling winds, and the drawn out groan of a very creaky door).

3. Building resilience around a core

This is about sustainability. In their inimicable way Chinwag brought the first conversations together, I suggested the idea whilst sat on the panel, and from there we kinda made it happen, together. To be resilient, to sustain, we need a hardcore, we need our own Wikipedians, the 1%ers that commit. And we've been very fortunate already with the influence and power (!) of our attendees, and I feel particularly grateful for Rachel Clarke, Adrian Moss, Helen Aspell and Anna Carlson who have been involved both sessions so far. (I've racked my brains for any others, if I missed you I'm terribly sorry, I am a little hungover if that helps ease the pain?). What I've suggested and can see happening is a core forming, some people who can help make the good stuff happening so that there isn't a single point of failure: this is a networked organisation, luvvies, ya? YA?!

So I'm running out of time here but I hope you get the idea.

Next event: Weds 4th June, 10 am - 12 pm, Coach and Horses (subject to them having availability)

Be there, or be a clueless big talking hippified no-tangible-proof social media 'it's not about measurement...oooh is that a UFO' muppet.

PS. Any feedback gratefully received on how we can make this even better either from real-world attendees or hidden farway interested parties, or general thoughts and next steps

MeasurementCamp: and so the conversations began

In amongst some heavy shit elsewhere in some of the more fundamental aspects of my life, I wanted to find the time to blog about this because I care about it.

So we had the first MeasurementCamp.

Some background for those that haven't heard of this movement:
The smart people at Chinwag (and I don't say smart cos I wanna suck up to them, I say smart because event after event they seem to nail the digital zeitgeist right in the effing jugular and I admire that proximity, insight and timing) put on an event called Measuring Social Media and I was lucky to be invited onto the panel. More background on that event here and elsewhere.

What I tangibly felt in that room that night were those mercurial and compelling twins: need and opportunity. Given that overt calling, and the incredible turnout and breadth of people in the room (in terms of background, role etc) my top-of-head suggestion was collaboration: 'an open-source set of agreed measurements for social media'.

With a bit of help from a wiki, out of that first night some twenty five (?) of us met earlier this week at the first MeasurementCamp.

The purpose of MeasurementCamp is:

...to create a set of open source resources which allow interested parties to measure their social media communications online and offline.

That's shit wording - my wording so far, but it's wikified so let's hope it 'heals' - but I hope you get the idea...

The MeasurementCamp movement is about fundamentally addressing these issues of what do we measure, what do we believe in, what can we learn from measurement, what can we all agree on and work towards as an industry, what do we report back on and share and benchmark against. That kinda shizzle.

Why? Because it matters. Drucker, the guru's guru, said what get measured get's done. Because the SEO industry and Google's billions owe their existence to their ability to prove. Because we all know it's brilliant and fun and profound and the right-thing-to-do, so why can't we prove it? Because.

And the name MeasurementCamp is probably clumsy too.
Geek purists will say that a somethingCamp should run over a weekend and this that and the other. I don't give a flying flea-bitten donkeyfied horseshit. What those geek purists have done for the world is create a format of events that is profound and wonderful that it is bleeding into horrible soulless and broken worlds like that of business conferences incredibly quickly (e.g. 'Marketing Tech: Tailormade' where delegates chose the talks to go to on the fly from 4 concurrently running options, where all speakers were clearly briefed to be very very practical in their content) - so we're gonna take that goodness and apply it here, regardless of what the purists might snark. Because at the very core of the MeasurementCamp movement will be the same essence of BarCamps (and TransitCamps and - perhaps most breathtaking of all - Social Innovation Camps) and apply it: collaboration in its true form; small groups working on practial things; no hierarchy; goodness.

I don't know how many people exactly were there, and I don't know how many of the gang came to the original Chinwag event. That kinda shit *really doesn't matter now*.

What matters is what we started. And the 'we' was a really exciting group of PR folk, digital agency and independent peeps, some of the big players in the buzz monitoring/technology space, a really cool group.

From an initial open discussion we came out with the following things that'd be useful to each of our selfish needs:

• Metrics to measure - what do we measure
• Shared vocabulary - making life easier within the industry
• Benchmarking - how do our results compare with everyone else?
• Standards - ensuring apples-for-apples comparisons across industry
• Proof or evidence (of social media success) - case studies to convince colleagues or clients to participate in what we inherently know to be right
• Tools - to measure stuff with

Social Media Cafe majordomo Lloyd Davis suggested that any who felt strongly about spending the next 1.5 hrs talking about a given subject say it out loud and that people could gravitate towards the topics they felt interested by. That worked well and so the MeasurementCampers split into 3 groups of similar sizes:

• Metrics to measure
• Proxies to measure - at Lloyd's suggestion, so I think this was about finding other things that already exist (e.g. sales data) to measure social media 'marketing' performance
• Proof

Then in true caring-sharing fashion each group reported back before we all departed.
It felt to me that real progress made.
The groups are going to be updating the wiki - it looks like some of that has started already. I'll flag it up here when there's some real progress for the rest of the world to benefit from.

Next steps:

• Sign up on Upcoming for the next installment
• Contribute to the wiki

Whirlwind few weeks

Sorry for the lack of blogging - I doubt it has significantly impacted on your quality of life nor on that bad case of botty nits that your donkey is suffering from, but I can say that normal service will resume soon.

In the meantime, as a team we were at MarketingTech: Tailormade earlier this week with our little stand, our little social media ebooks and a medium-sized talk on Practical Tips for Web 2.0. Nice bunch of peeps, good interactive, practical format is what client-side attendees demand, and some great conversations started...

Tomorrow is Social Media for Business with the good people at NMK - really looking forward to a nice training day sharing the new shizzle goodness with a group of mainly industry peeps.

Thursday is my first international assignment at Search Marketing World in Dublin, where I'll be talking about the future of digital social media for a few minutes and then being part of a panel - I try to give good panel ;) And more importantly looking fwd to a bursty hour or two of touristy nobbiness in Dublin city centre (please add any suggestions or recommendations to the comments!)

And Friday is a private in-house briefing for a very well known food goods company.

Friday afternoon will be a period of intense exhaustion, lifted only by regular doses of office Peroni supplies.

In the real world, we've had a couple of great clients join in the last few weeks so we're not just prancing around talking about high fakery and silly nonny bonkersness, but you can find that kinda news on the team blog as and when we get to it.

Hope you're well, and if you're gonna be at the Dublin thing please drop me an email - be great to hook up.

MeasurementCamp, 8th April morning, Soho, London

People of the digital frontier, filthy rag-bedraggling peasants that ye be, get your Twitterdicted bee-hinds to:

Tuesday April 8th, 10 am - 12 pm

The Coach & Horses
29 Greek Street
W1D 5DH

Assembled there will be the mighty and the wise of this thing they call digital social media mumble mumble muble, and there will be plotting, discussion, back-slapping and a few of those American sports coach bum slaps that are acceptable between non-lovers.

Seriously though.
Be there.
The list of interested parties alone is frankly interesting enough to make me feel fizzy in my tummy and upper leg regions.

Notes from FT Digital Media & Broadcasting conference 2008

Ashley Highfield, Head of Future Media and Technology, BBC

• iPlayer is, of course, proving long-tail.
• Growing all time, with recent peak of 660k uses last weekend, due to Six Nations rugby
• 1/8th quality of BBC Freeview in terms of picture quality
• Took 3 years due to work across whole supply chain
• Virgin Media launching BBC iPlayer march 31st – and BBC wants roll out across playforms from there, inc cable tv players, apple platform,
• Project Kangaroo – BBC, ITV, C4 – to monetise and expire content.
• BBC has 1.3 m hours of archives, yet less than 1% avail on iPlayer - huge opportunity...
• 16 – 24 yo is fast moving audience segment in terms of consumption, migrating online but decreasing engagement from 10 hrs tv watching to 1 hr online engagement so that’s the challenge – not the numbers but the volume of consumption.
• BBC currently handles 3m inbound items of user-generated content per day: sms, comments, photos etc. (Holy moly!!!!)
• Figures show that iPlayer isn’t (yet) cannabilising audiences but in fact adding audiences that would have otherwise missed the content, also feel better to host themselves than have someone else cannabilise it (e.g. bittorrent)
• Biggest strategic issue: disintermediation and controlling the brand ‘credit’ when content goes through others channels.

Rona Fairhead, CEO, Financial Times Group
•    Ongoing shift in revenues:
•    2000 – 72% print, 28% online –
•    2008 – 43% vs 57%
•    Future trends:
•    Continued growth but polarised btw mass and super niche
•    Greater interaction with customers
•    New skills in their workforce to innovate and attract hottest talent

Great question to this first panel from Julie Meyer, who was then still in the audience, on what is your Achilles heel?
Answer from BBC: a cross-platform consistent form of measurement  in a multimedia world…(sounds like a similar thing to our measuring social media movement to me!)

Dr Robert Cailliau, co-developer of the World Wide Web

This guy was fantastic. Humble, funny, sweet, and so absolutely on the money when it came to the ethos of the web. I didn't expect that (I don't know why), and was delighted to get it.

•    ‘The web succeeded because it was like a virus’ - and so has every web service since, ebay, google, skype, craigslist. Simple, but easy to overlook.
•    On free wifi: ‘They don’t charge you for the lift, right, and I’m certain the lift costs more to maintain than the wifi...' cue laughter from the audience
•    On banner advertising: ‘I hate these things that move around’ cue more laughter, even though by day 2 it was clear that they were all intent on advertising-supported being their biz model

Habbo hotel

•    “Habbo Hotel users sell more items of furniture to one another than Ikea does worldwide in the real world” – 3i guy

Ron Galloway

This guy is very interesting. From Georgia, USA, he has the southern drawl and all of the misconceptions that can bring with it (which he plays on!) but has been a day trader, a filmmaker, a political activist of sorts - the kind of breadth that makes for interesting perspectives.

His talk was relating the technology prowess of Wal-mart with tagging and the shifting relationships between content, databases, value and sales.

I only wrote down a few fun facts as I was listening and enjoying Ron's talk:

• Walmart annual shrinkage would be 600th biggest company in usa by turnover which demonstrates not so much a problem with dishonesty but the sheer scale of the operation ('shrinkage' is the retailing term for inventory which is stolen by your own staff)
• According to Wal-mart's sophisticated data mining and analysis, before hurricanes people buy beer and strawberry poptarts...

Nova Spivack, Radar Networks

This was one of the most educational talks of the two days for me personally because I know little about the semantic web and this got me started on the topic.

• ‘The semantic graph’ connects everything.
• Interesting point about pendulum swinging between back-end and front-end innovation each decade – Web 2.0 is about UI (user interface - AJAX, nice usable front-ends); Web 3.0 is about the database, the infrastructure of the web.
• A lot of this inputting of data to build the semantic graph will be inputted via speech rather than typing which does have implications for privacy, but NASA has a technology that recognises whispers!
• Tagging is lightweight semantics.
• Natural language search allows natural questions and conversational interactions to occur -> Semantic search will recognise the relationships between data, and therefore in the questions that you pose of it -> Reasoning will involve logic, where the system takes into account pertinent variables to provide logical answers.
• Italy is bizarrely strongly represented in semantic web development.

Blake Chandlee, Facebook

I thought Blake was one of the most convincing representatives at the 2 day conference which is high praise in a way, when you consider that we saw people from Microsoft, Yahoo, Mozilla, AOL, MTV, Orange, NBC etc etc. Straight talking, knew his stuff, wasn't afraid to be assertive - I thought he came across well and I'm glad that we've got someone like that heading things up in the UK because it's a style that works here. I picked up some nice little stats and anecdotes to take away with me, which are here.

• Facebook developed an app to crowdsource the translation of the site into non-English languages
• 50% of Facebook users visit daily
• Average Facebook user has 115 friends
• A key concept is to enable ‘social actions’ in a ‘frictionless’ environment
• Facebook is the 2nd biggest source of traffic for TripAdvisor, the bulk of which it was inferred comes from Cities I’ve Visited app.
• Mindshare is running a campaign solely advertising to the Starcom network on Facebook – its main competitor - which is getting a ‘very high response rate’!

Moray MacLennan, Chairman, Europe, M&C Saatchi

• When you put 50% of your budget into search, you’re depleting your marketing budget by half. It’s not marketing, it’s ‘distribution’.

A fantastically valid, and interesting point. Indeed. I wonder what a search expert would say to that? Please comment if you have a come-back or further thought!

Hamish Pringle, IPA

"We know from the IPA Effectiveness awards that the average winning case uses 4 different marketing channels." - useful stat

Interesting concepts and themes I picked up across the 2 days:

• Total media value – cross platform content, where some channels subsidise strategically valuable other channels
• Micropayments for accessing content as complementary payment type to subscription - paying by the article, per itunes, rather than by the period
• “Luxury content” – Julie Meyer.
• Business model innovations other than advertising-supported.
• Always stepping up a layer: so phase 1 is web content businesses, stepping up a layer is becoming an aggregator; phase 1 is ecommerce biz, stepping up a layer is being an affiliate; what is stepping up from being an agency? What is stepping up from being twitter?
• Super-affiliates are the Wal-mart of the web. This will grow...
• Variables of social media properties, as looked for by financiers: eyeballs; network scale; lock-in; global reach; 'quality'.

Remaining challenges for media cos:

• Cannabalisation – they’re all worried about this and don’t know how this will emerge – my thoughts on this are: “eat yourself alive first or ultimately let others devour you”
• Ad-supported cornflakes syndrome – overwhelmingly they believe in ad-supported models, so do they realise that too many chase too few ad dollars?
• Peak attention – is a concept they don’t seem to be thinking about…
• Owning the relationship with the consumer vs reach via disintermediation and piracy - this seems like a damn hard one to solve

In summary:

• Big media cos still don't know what to do, but they definitely know what the challenges are now and are clearly working on finding solutions
• However, they're not (ahem) thinking outside the box - it's still advertising-supported everything, and it's still locked down command-and-control thinking - we needed Umair on the stage doing his 'decay' thing
• The event was attended by a good level of people but the networking side of things was tame
• The location and general slickness of the event was true to the FT brand - top-end stuff
• I went to find out where the entertainment and media orgs were up to so I'd give it a 7/10, but had I been going to learn it woulda been a 4/10 (but to be fair and decent this event isn't aimed at me, so it's a pointless score really!).

I'm at Financial Times Digital Media & Broadcasting Conference

Really looking forward to and expecting big things from this event tomorrow which runs for two-days: The annual Financial Times Digital Media & Broadcasting Conference.

Why?

Because the changes imposed on media businesses by the internet are incredibly interesting, challenging and we are still at the formative stages of those changes.

Because the speakers represent the cream of the businesses that *need* to change - it's going to be fascinating to see if they talk the talk or really get this new world.

There's free wifi so I plan to twitter and blog and all that other real time crapola.

Onwards!

Chinwag Live 'Measuring Social Media', rethinking event formats and wise crowds

Last night was the Chinwag Live event 'Measuring Social Media'.

I was a panellist with Alex Burmaster from Nielsen Online, Robin Grant of 1000heads, Ankur Shah Co-founder of Techlightenment, and with Jim Sterne from the Web Analytics Association in the chair.

The guys at Chinwag did a great job - the event was sold out, so they picked a great and timely topic. The location was fine, nice and central, easy to find, spacious without being cavernous, there was free beer - it was cool, and bang on. Deirdre, Sam and the team know how to make this stuff happen.

But as a panel we failed.

The social media goodness here of people expressing their opinions online and sharing them means that we have access to the following feedback:

helenium

back from chinwag, twas good but a few more client voices would have been nice. Less 'social media rocks' stuff maybe. We all know that.

Stuart Bruce, Wolfstar:

I came away both pleased and disappointed. Disappointed because I didn’t feel that I’d learnt a great deal. Pleased because I now feel far more confident about my own and Wolfstar’s views and expertise in this area.

Tim Hoang, Rainier PR:

For those that missed it, the debate went like this: We need to measure social media! You can’t, it’s about people! We need to measure people! We are doing it! No we are not! It’s complex.
While I didn’t expect there to be a ‘42’ type meaning of life, universe and everything solution, I was disappointed with some questions being dodged and informed opinions given as fact.

Wendy McAuliffe, Liberate Media:

If I’m honest, I came away thinking that I hadn’t learnt as much as I’d hoped to, and this sentiment seemed to be shared by other people in the audience. A Tweetscan last night for ‘chinwag’ was very telling - a lot of passive observations, but nothing ground-breaking or inspiring being shared.

So it seems that the common thread is the disappointment around not having learned more on such an interesting and potentially rich topic...

At this stage I will say that it is quite possible that these opinions are not representative of the whole, and that these guys were the disappointed few, but I tempted to disagree with that - JennyBee is a sane rational person, a good reality check, and we chatted afterwards and she said that was the feedback she'd got from people - came to learn 'practical tips' were her words, and largely didn't.

So what we did do was rattle on about the big issues on the topic, and it was a bit male and a bit dickwaddish at times.

I had thought that by stirring up a debate, which was what I like to do, some good stuff would fall out. Instead we basically failed to address the core 'want': to learn more on the topic. Doh!

So what do we need to do?

This got me thinking today that the key failing here was something that needn't have happened.

And this needs to be addressed because these kind of web people are smart people. It's a breed thing, something in the DNA. Things move so quickly with the melting point of web, culture, business and other stuff that these people are all rapacious learners, on-it, smart to keep up (the slow get eaten). We teach ourselves because the books aren't out yet, nor are the courses or whatever else. Go to a vanilla marketing or PR event and it's similar but different - less edge, less hunger, less 'right now'. I really believe this.

But even so, despite this keen audience, I think that particular panel could definitely deliver content that would've helped shed light on what people wanted - what we needed was a clear steer from the audience on what they wanted to get out of the evening.

And if that's not something we can address with the power of social media, or sms voting, or something fooking simple like a bunch of biros and some paper or a flipping ticksheet when you arrive, I'd be amazed.

Perhaps now all 'webby people' events should have constant polling throughout their events? Maybe this has been tried and doesn't work, but I'm keen to know and explore.

If you wanted a techie solution you could have a live tweetscan projected onto a wall (fucking cool - 'rate my panel' in real time - bring it!) or a sensible solution then regular shows of hands ('do you want more or less discussion of topic XYZ or shall we move to option A or option B?').

Most decent speakers can and should be expected to turn on a sixpence and change and tailor their content to the need there and then. That's your responsibility if you put yourself forward.

This has to happen.
Not so much in our industry but in the world of conferences and seminars in general too many events are hit and miss - every different provider and industry has its ratios, but like with web analytics (booom!) it's about improving the ratios, working the numbers.
And too much good thinking and great preparation goes into them.
Plus the ticket investments but more, the collective time we *all* spend at these events together, all more or less gunning for the same outcomes, a successful happy crowd.

With wise crowds like ours, we need to rethink the interactions between audience and crowd. I'm not going to put a 2 and a 'oh' at the end of it, but I do think the wider trends of democratisation, universal access to information, self-publishing and all that other good stuff mean that the dynamic of events has fundamentally evolved. We no longer sit dumbly smiling, happy to be fed lines. Performance is demanded, 'actionable learning please Mrs Expert, or else...'.

Another idea I had, which is probably very silly and probably influenced by my toddler's parachute games at music group (!!!) is that the entire audience sits in a circle, or maybe a series of circles for larger groups like last night's, and maybe there are some flipcharts and some key roles ('chair', 'flip chart minuter' - whatever) and the whole thing becomes truly interactive, the intelligence in the groups bubbles up and is improved collectively, and some cool kinetic learning shit comes out if all. Each group could report back the key 3 points to the rest, and then the say 12 key points are then documented to a wiki.

What do you think?

• What have you seen work well at 'normal' events?
• And how can unconferences and barcamps and all that influence these kind of events?

Last random idea before I go to bed:

Organisers as panellists.
I doubt, I really really doubt, that you can find a more broadly and deeply up to date bunch of web 'experts' than Sam Michel, Deirdre Molloy, Ian Delaney, Linus Gregoriadis, Ashley Friedlin and maybe throw a bit of Mike Butcher or one of the Guardian team into the mix just for fun (maybe Mike's the chocolate sprinkles and the non-journos are the cappuccino).
I reckon they'd make an awesome panel, seriously. Someone should do it - the 'superpanel'.

Anyway, feedback as always please - I need it (see above!). See you in the comments section.

upcoming opportunities to meet in the real world!

Here are some things I'm up to over the next little while - lemme know if we can use one or other of them as an opportunity to meet or catch up the real world!

• Weds 23rd Jan (tomorrow) -
  
  • Umair Haque's Next Wednesday followed briskly by
  • Top Cats, which should be fun
• Tues 29th Jan
  
  • PR, Social Media & Blogging event, as a speaker and (cough) sponsor
    
  • Chinwag Skills Emergency - v. interesting topic for those of us in the biz
• Thurs 7th Feb
  • NetImperative Widgety Goodness Directors Dinner
• Weds 13th Feb
  • NMK 'Social Media for Business' training course I'm delivering to enthusiastic newbies - send your willing colleagues and friends!
• Thurs 14th Feb
  
  • Oxford College of Marketing 'Cutting edge online marketing' training course delivered for marketers wanting to step up from the basics, lots of cool bits
• Mon 17th Feb
  • Chinwag 'Measuring Social Media' event this is a must-attend for us all in the industry, seriously; thanks to Deirdre and Sam for involving me as a panelist
• Mon 25th & 26th Feb
  • FT 'Digital Media & Broadcasting Conference' as attendee - looks mindblowing interesting and relevant, and a chance to scare give hope to the under-threat media cos - hopefully it will be!

Please lemme know if there's a chance to meet :)

Web 2.0 executive briefing, a London Finance House

Great day yesterday put on by Justin from It's Open for an unnamed London Financial company.

The group of marketing guys from the client seemed interested and receptive, asked some great and challenging questions, and the speakers kept me really interested.

Damian Carrington, Interactive Editor of the FT.com, talked interestingly and engagingly about how the FT is moving things on.

I've heard speakers from Times Online and the Telegraph, and felt that Damian 'got it' (this new fangled social web thing) better than those guys - just in the language that he used and the way he talked about moderation, passionate commenters, linking to competitors, 'gardening not construction' as a metaphor for community nurturing -- it was good stuff. 
And that's important for UK biz, I think, with Murdoch buying the FT's competitor the Wall Street Journal, it's vital that our cherished pink paper continues to thrive online and everywhere in this fragmenting world.

Some titbits from Damian on the FT.com's performance:

• Nov 07 - 5.7m unique visitors (a lower month - a v. big month for them is more like 7.7m))
• 20% of visitors are 'C-suite' - CEO, CFO etc. - the FT.com isn't a volume play, those figures above aren't huge, it's about who is consuming their content of course, their valued audience
• More and more FT journalists getting into and really enjoying blogging and finding a new more authentic voice for themselves and loving the feedback and comments - gave example of Gideon Rachman
• Video usage has gone up 400% since start of 07

I did my bit on 'How social media changes marketing', and talked about fings like:

• thinking and behaving like part of network vs. being a distant, ivory tower divorced from the network, the stakeholders, the world online
• working towards being a platform rather than a destination, with examples of how Salesforce.com and Facebook have grown ecosystems around themselves
• with that in mind, the role of widgets and how the web is becoming mosaic'd quilted atomized thingymajig
• crowdsourcing and campaigning online - dell ideastorm, innocentive, cadbury's wispa, hsbc student overdrafts turnaround
• fish where the fishes are - online communities for different people in the traditional business decision making unit - linkedin, cisco netpro forums, ernst and young facebook recruitment
• the power of peer to peer conversations - ratings and reviews - the power of inviting, harnessing and embracing feedback

Justin Hunt from It's Open talked blogs, a topic dear to my heart although much-fatigued at a veneer level in the marketing community. It was a good run through and the best bit were the specific suggestions for the client at the end, which got a good conversation going. Clearly the business has been considering how to get involved in the blogosphere so their questions were pertinent, sophisticated and useful.

Then my favourite influence and buzz measurement rockstar Flemming Madsen from Onalytica did his bit. Excellent as always; there was a real tension in the room when he built up, X-factor styleeee, to revealing who was the most influential financial news media organisation on the issue of 'subprime' credit crunch, given that the FT were in the room. (The winner on that specific issue was the New York Times, according to Madsen's influence black magic computers).

And then the most challenging and therefore audience-engaged topic was David Burden from Daden's slot on virtual worlds which was very enjoyable, and received with the usual mix of mind-bogglement, complete resistance, disbelief, fear and interest from the group. But that's brilliant, because it means people's minds were whirring, even at the end of a long and tiring day.

Cool.

Widgety Goodness round the corner!

Widgety Goodness is just a week or two away now, which is pretty exciting.

Some great people attending, with international widget gurus congregating here in Brighton, the coolest digital community in Europe.

Particularly looking fwd to hearing Russell Davies' take on things, to hear what the Widget heavy hitters like Ori Soen and Steve Touhill (who we're working with) have to say, plus to hear and hopefully meet some names that get banded about a lot - Steve Bowbrick, Jon Baines...

Are you coming? I hope so :)

Nixon McInnes is sponsoring the TechCrunch UK party, Widgety Goodness itself, and I will be talking for 15 minutes on how our agency is structured and behaves in this new era of an atomised, democratized (?) flat web-powered world.